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I played 3.0 in the Army, but I kept up with DnD through its lifespan. All without ever getting to play another game.
When PF announced its Alpha test, I decided that I was going to change that, and began a Savage Tide game online, played weekly. Still play it to this day. It is probably the most fun I've ever had in the game.
I admit I'm having some rules fatigue issues, but overall, I love Pathfinder. I would prefer to see more stuff developed along the lines of the Adventure Path and Campaign Setting material, than the Core Rules and (especially) Player's Companion.
Dungeon Magazine was three adventures a month. I've never really gotten over the loss there.
I find Pathfinder to be...tolerable.
I play it because it is a market leader (plenty of play opportunities, lots of adventure support, etc.), has a robust organized play program, and because it's familiar. However, it is far from my favorite system, and far too in-love with mechanics for mechanics sake for my tastes. The Core Rulebook is also in desperate need of a complete re-write, even if they don't change a single rule.
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Pathfinder is a HUGE step in the right direction beyond 3.X, but it's far from perfect. In my opinion, there's room in the market and ample opportunity for Pathfinder 2.0, a system that builds on the solid foundation of d20 but irons out all the legacy kinks, stuff that's just too heavy for the tenuous link it provides to the nostalgia of old school D&D (vancian spellcasting, feat taxes, high-level power creep, splat books, etc).
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Yes, I like Pathfinder. A lot.
I don't believe it to be the End All game - but I don't believe such a game exists or will ever exist.
I've been playing RPGs for nearly 35 years, starting with Dr Holmes' Basic D&D. And I've played a good number of systems - RuneQuest, Traveller, Rolemaster, Chivalry & Sorcery, The Fantasy Trip, GURPS, HarnMaster, Hero System and more.
Pathfinder has a good mix of character definition (what your character can do is quantified mechanically) and tactical decision making. It shares that with 3.5. But what I get out of the Paizo/Pathfinder team is a sense of fun that I didn't get out of 3.5 particularly. I know that seems a little weird as in a number of cases, the Pathfinder team was part of the 3.5 team, but I find Pathfinder just bubbles with fun.
Pathfinder is not a simulationist game, like many I've played over the years. It's happily ensconced in the Game end of the Game-Sim-Narrative corner of the triangle.
But like all games, one can emphasise different elements, and I like to emphasise the roleplaying element. I build characters to a concept, not by optimising race/class/feat combinations.
Golarion itself is a fun world. Yes, I can see the joins, and I don't mind them at all.
So yes, I like Pathfinder. It isn't the only game I play, even now - but it is my mainstay.
I personally do like Pathfinder; but I loathe the d20 system. Which may sound counter-intuitive but most of the tinkering I have ever wanted to do (or have done) with Pathfinder has been on the core mechanics.
Indeed - it's one of the many reasons I continue to think Unchained is a stellar book and holds very very good replacements for the d&d 3.5 engine in the middle of the machine.
Does it fix everything? No. But comparatively, it is replacing the upholstery of a car after the book replace the old battered mechanical part with a completely new, and different, set.
I appreciate one might contend that I subsequently then don't play Pathfinder at all, having ripped out the beating heart it started with. But well, I'd personally allege I gave that a transplant, and every other organ is now functioning far better after it.
Still - echoing problems of high level play. But this is one way in which the 3.5 engine carries a giant hole. It brakes under lots of power. It shatters, stutters, and rapidly loses any semblance of control.
But Paizo's classes, concepts, so forth? I actually like them. Much as there are problems/complaints of things being shut down of late, or other things having never been great options; I'm mostly fine with it. I still enjoy the vast vast majority of what I am presented with and hope to continue to.
The only thing that ever causes me a problem is a slight taste for (and habit of reading) optimization stuff. But that typically goes by reading an unexplored/unmentioned option for five minutes. Particularly the flavour text. A particular reason that I enjoy Paizo's "upholstery", by above analogy.
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I like Pathfinder. I won't say I love Pathfinder, but I like it.
My personal preference is for a versatile system with a lot of crunch and a huge variety of options. I have a lot of fun sifting through options to create... not optimized characters, but bizarre and unique ones, that shouldn't function, but somehow do.
I started with Over the Edge and AD&D 2, and moved to 3.0 several years after that. About two years ago I started playing Pathfinder.
I love the decisions Paizo made with early Pathfinder yet find a number of the later decisions they have made mystifying. I don't even mind the concepts behind much of the new content, although some of the class balance in the playtesting is a bit... off? Instead, most of my interaction with the design team is through the FAQs and Errata, which have almost exclusively negative effects on the state of the game locally. That puts a bad taste in my mouth.
As someone who hasn't played in an organized play campaign before, Pathfinder Society was a revelation. The mandatory FAQs and errata drive me up a wall (mostly because I hate the "Russian roulette" approach to destroying builds) but I love the scenario structure, transference of characters from table to table or region to region, and the ability to create and build as many darned characters as I want. And maybe even aspire to play some of them.
However, I've played a lot of Magic the Gathering in my time as well, and between 3.5 and M:tG, I have come to the conclusion that Paizo has some good designer talent but is very bad with development. (Although recent hires may reverse this trend; I haven't gone through the latest releases with a fine-toothed comb yet.) Content is continually being released that is unnecessarily ambiguous or broken and the standard approaches used in game design to reduce this ambiguity are not used. Simple things like language templates seem to have been a tough sell, which disappoints me to no end. I vaguely remember seeing something about "keeping the writing interesting and readable" as an excuse, which... I don't even know what to say. I guess I should find the quote before I go off on that particular tangent.
As someone with an interest in system building and design, and who has increasingly disagreed with the design decisions we have sightlines into, I've started wondering what a successor to Pathfinder looks like. I'm even considering working on some of it myself, not that I have much 3PP experience (and thus, the odds of me succeeding would seem very low!). Paizo has done a good job of recognizing the problems in 3.5 and addressing them, but I don't know how good they are at recognizing possible improvements in their own product(s) and processes.
To everyone who doesn't like Pathfinder: do you know who else didn't like Pathfinder?
Stalin.
You don't want to be like Stalin, do you?
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To everyone who doesn't like Pathfinder: do you know who else didn't like Pathfinder?
Stalin.
You don't want to be like Stalin, do you?
well if you're not Stalin, you're a Russian, and I don't want to be Russian either.
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well if you're not Stalin, you're a Russian, and I don't want to be Russian either.To everyone who doesn't like Pathfinder: do you know who else didn't like Pathfinder?
Stalin.
You don't want to be like Stalin, do you?
Maybe you prefer to just be Putin along?
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The responses here have been illuminating about how people feel.
I'm currently playing D&D 5th edition and my experiences have been that I understand why jump ship from Pathfinder to 5th ed but just comparing the Core rulebook to the DMG and Player's handbook I find it lacking in terms of options and scope. I get the same feel I do from Pathfinder's Beginner Box (with the free third party support involved). Aside from not really being capable of playing the character I want have not seen caster/martial disparity 'solved' as many players described but it goes through great lengths to nerf everything. I guess with the monsters ultimately being pretty weak compared to the PCs will do it. But in terms of getting your fantasy game on with minimal fiddly bits and complexities its a solid game.
I feel like expanding past the Advanced player's guide makes Pathfinder turn into a hassle... Until third party products are involved which makes me really sad that so many tables ignore or be wary of it. As I got more books more problems arose and I think third party products pretty much solved every one of them. I do blame Paizo's developers for that but I refrain from holding it against them. Design is consistent in protecting the game's status quo and as the game grows some aspects of the game really suffer from it, but I understand because protecting the game's status quo let them take over where 3.5 left off. As I noted elsewhere I've been reading Designers and Dragons and looking up a lot of 3.X history and can see why a Pathfinder 2.0 or wrecking the game's status quo can ruin the player base and all the companies involved. I really hope that things like Ultimate Campaign and Pathfinder Unchained become regular releases in the future because those things were gamechangers by being outside the normal status quo and gives tools to Pathfinder's real strength, which to me is it's ability to be not just a character creation game on the side but a game creation game on the side. (without being as abstract as things like FATE, or with the genre neutrality of GURPS) I think that the game is just better when Paizo isn't the end all and be all of Pathfinder because medieval stasis fantasy or standard 3.5 mechanics are not the end all and be all of Pathfinder. For example, although I have not experienced it as much as I'd like myself there is one local group of mostly kids that have made massive use of Pathfinder Unchained and their enjoyment level has reportedly skyrocketed due to the classes, the alternate skill methods and the new action economy. (despite the general wariness of the new action economy on the boards) In reality Pathfinder is a massive sandbox where even vancian casting is optional and martials are as good as you want them to be.
But I'll have to admit, for quick pick up games and games where I have players that cant or dont' want to deal with crunchy fiddly systems, 5th ed is my go to until Five Moons finally comes out.
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I'm not sure anymore. I like building characters, I like actually playing. But I'm souring on Paizo. The breakwater moment was the ACG, a product so far from being ready for publication, it's not even funny. That they then took f%##ing forever to finish the book is literally a crime. As in, if Paizo were headquartered in my country, I would have sued them for a refund for the book and probably won. When they finally finished the book, they went way overboard with the nerfhammer and destroyed every new martial concept coming out from the book.
Then there's the way that the Paizo writers continue to suck at game design, refuse to learn anything, and refuse to engage with the fans because we say mean things about them on the internet.
EDIT: Having read another post about language templates, I have to put my finger on it: The Paizo writers are sloppy. There's no word that better describes what they do wrong.
I like Pathfinder. There's a whole lot of houserules that I run, and there's a lot of material that I leave out, but part of why I like it is because it still functions with these changes and omissions. A big part of why I like it is that I can run a campaign for people with an experience set anywhere between 'full immersion in 3rd edition and 3.5' and 'remembered liking Baldur's Gate when it came out' without anyone getting stressed or bored. And I have played and enjoyed a small amount of PFS, and the fact that there is an organised play option that Paizo puts as much effort supporting and regulating as they do (even though all the balance/nerf/letting options in and then ruling them out does draw criticism) is commendable.
If I was playing someone else's PF campaign, though, and they had every option on the table, I probably wouldn't like it very much.
I like pathfinder. It's like 3.5e but with more balanced material and a much better thirdparty scene. The balance aren't anywhere near where I want them, but most of the classes are generally pretty balanced, with only a small number of outliers which you can just ignore since there is more balanced options to using them (like using occult occultists or sphere-casting, or akashic viziers instead of wizards). The flavour for a lot of material is pretty decent, and the mechanics they do make aren't hard to tweak and often give inspiration for future homebrew.
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EDIT: Having read another post about language templates, I have to put my finger on it: The Paizo writers are sloppy. There's no word that better describes what they do wrong.
There are definitely some pretty egregious cases of this, like how one can ask about the interaction between Precise Strike (the Duelist PrC ability), Precise Strike (the Teamwork fear) and Precise Strike (the swashbuckler deed).
I'm currently playing D&D 5th edition and my experiences have been that I understand why jump ship from Pathfinder to 5th ed but just comparing the Core rulebook to the DMG and Player's handbook I find it lacking in terms of options and scope. I get the same feel I do from Pathfinder's Beginner Box (with the free third party support involved). Aside from not really being capable of playing the character I want have not seen caster/martial disparity 'solved' as many players described but it goes through great lengths to nerf everything. I guess with the monsters ultimately being pretty weak compared to the PCs will do it. But in terms of getting your fantasy game on with minimal fiddly bits and complexities its a solid game.
I didn't get that impression from 5e. Compare to all of PF and 3rd party, I think 5e can actualize a similar number of character concepts and mechanics. Compare to just the CRB, 5e crushes it.
My 5e characters also feel stronger to me. Sure the numbers are smaller but my abilities seem to have more umpf. You have less spells but they do more.
Its one of the reasons I am growing tired of PF. I've really looked through and played another game where it seems the devs thought "does this meaningfully add to the game?" before they wrote every rules and option. I can't help but look at some of the trash paizo publishes and think "did anyone at paizo seriously think this was useful?"
I'm not sure anymore. I like building characters, I like actually playing. But I'm souring on Paizo. The breakwater moment was the ACG, a product so far from being ready for publication, it's not even funny. That they then took f@$!ing forever to finish the book is literally a crime. As in, if Paizo were headquartered in my country, I would have sued them for a refund for the book and probably won. When they finally finished the book, they went way overboard with the nerfhammer and destroyed every new martial concept coming out from the book.
Then there's the way that the Paizo writers continue to suck at game design, refuse to learn anything, and refuse to engage with the fans because we say mean things about them on the internet.
EDIT: Having read another post about language templates, I have to put my finger on it: The Paizo writers are sloppy. There's no word that better describes what they do wrong.
You do realize how ironic you are being when you state that the developers refuse to engage with fans on a forum put up by Paizo and paid for by Paizo? The developers are on these forums constantly. They very often engage with fans about criticisms. I think you mean that you don't agree with their design choices, and, well, you have that right. I don't like every decision Paizo has made in regards to Pathfinder, but I have always found the developers to be sincere in their explanations about what they did and why they did them.
As far as sucking at game design... Have you ever tried to design a game system? A hint. It is freakin hard. I have played in a lot of games in a lot of different systems for almost 40 years. Pathfinder is one of the best designed systems I have found. I do admit I think it is rules heavy and I seldom use every subsystem or rule, but the mechanics of Pathfinder work quite well.Finally, I think that there is a big difference between "sloppy" and "not what you like". Agreed, not every rule written is perfectly balanced, but have you found a game that ISO? I haven't.
In all, I like Pathfinder. More importantly for me, I love Paizo as a company.
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When I made 5e characters they seemed forced to be sterotypical by mechanics like rogues getting a secret language, and the characters didn't seem to be able to do anything that seemed... special. Everyone's just sorta... bland mechanically.
Though my biggest gripe with the system is how I can't convert my setting to it.
I liked a lot it when I started playing it... I don't even recognize it anymore.
I stick with Paizo because I love the AP's... but now its gotten to the point that if you play an AP, by the time you finish it every character at the table is either illegal or unplayable. The integrity of the game has taken a distant backseat to rules bloat (gotta get that next book out, we can worry about the re-writes AFTER they've bought it) and some sort of Alinsky-esque adherence to the religion of 'game-balance' that bizarrely has them targeting whatever people happen to be enjoying the most.
More rules for the sake of more rules (and the profits that come with them) is ruining the game for me and making it unrecognizable from the game that brought me to the table in the first place.
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@boldstar, I don't think many people share that opinion about the dev team, to me they seem to do the bare minimum and skimp around design questions. They also seem to disregard hard questions.
as for game design, it's almost entirely taken from 3.5 :P
also they were sloppy, is was poorly put together, the book was not finished.
When I made 5e characters they seemed forced to be sterotypical by mechanics like rogues getting a secret language, and the characters didn't seem to be able to do anything that seemed... special. Everyone's just sorta... bland mechanically.
Though my biggest gripe with the system is how I can't convert my setting to it.
Meanwhile my dwarven wizard is in medium armor swinging a martial weapon to great effect. I feel a lot more freedom to break the mold and do whatever since the optimization treadmill to remain capable is just not there. Multiclassing also adds a lot options with the way spellcasting and prof bonus works.
Setting conversions is what holds back some of my groups, since that can just be WAY too much work.
When I made 5e characters they seemed forced to be sterotypical by mechanics like rogues getting a secret language, and the characters didn't seem to be able to do anything that seemed... special. Everyone's just sorta... bland mechanically.
Though my biggest gripe with the system is how I can't convert my setting to it.
I've only been playing a fighter but that was my feeling. When I grew from the Beginner Box to the Core Rulebook, despite what is said on the boards about fighter diversity, I got really wacky with the fighter before getting the Advanced Player's Guide. To be fair I play high INT fighters and almost always heavily use alchemical items but I had a blast and went weird. 5th ed, I'm playing the archetype with the superiority dice and it just feels bland. With the low numbers the d20 feels super swingy and leveling feels like nothing unless its a feat level. The superiority dice are effectively what pathfinder has as feats and after a while I only really use two (ripose and the one that lets you tank) leaving three that I just kind of sit there on my character sheet. I really wish I could trade superiority dice effects for more dice because most of the ones I have are rarely more helpful than the ones I use the most. I get more before next session and I don't really know which ones to use because a lot of them suck in my eyes. The dice seemed like a good idea but 5 min workdays and smoke breaks after every fight don't feel different to me, I'm just have reason to participate in it unlike Pathfinder's fighters, and they matter so much that I kind of have to. But overall I feel like I do less with a 5th ed Fighter than in Core only Fighter. Heck, even though I can move and get all my attacks I barely miss relish moving because most of my time is spent trading blows with the biggest thing in the room so that the squishy casters don't get hit. Overall I just find my character to have no-brainer options for my build and waiting forever to do something new.
But I can see that as being personal preference. In Pathfinder I don't optimize for damage with fighters, figuring that they do enough damage as it is, so I'm probably just not playing the Pathfinder Fighter 'correctly' in the first place. And to be fair I've been trying to commit suicide for a while with suboptimal actions and I'm still kicking. (session before last there was a troll that downed the party Monk so I decided to get him away from the monk instead of y'know attacking him with a bunch of attacks using my action surge, so I decided to suplex him. Since there's no real rules on that as far as I could tell the DM had me roll three checks and I had to use my action surge to do them all just to deal 3 damage to it and make it prone. ) So fighters are at least tough.
The feeling that all the monsters are nerfed compared to the PCs is pretty much that I feel like I could threaten things that I probably shouldnt' be able to at my level. At times we stumble into an encounter that's too powerful and I'm building a habit of challenging boss monsters to single combat. I just wail away until they're dead and maybe use a superiority die when they miss.
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You do realize how ironic you are being when you state that the developers refuse to engage with fans on a forum put up by Paizo and paid for by Paizo? The developers are on these forums constantly. They very often engage with fans about criticisms.
No. Wrong.
Mark Seifter engages with fans constantly. So does James Jacobs (but he's not a designer).
The others? Jason Buhlman, Stephen-Radney McFarland, and the two new guys who haven't even bothered to introduce themselves, much less engage with the community besides one dismissive put-down from one of them, do not. Jason hasn't posted anything beyond generic "We are opening this playtest" and "We are closing this playtest" remarks in almost a year. He didn't even participate in the most recent playtest, and neither did SRM from what I could tell, and both were BARELY active in the ACG playtest.
When I made 5e characters they seemed forced to be sterotypical by mechanics like rogues getting a secret language, and the characters didn't seem to be able to do anything that seemed... special. Everyone's just sorta... bland mechanically.
Though my biggest gripe with the system is how I can't convert my setting to it.
I've only been playing a fighter but that was my feeling. When I grew from the Beginner Box to the Core Rulebook, despite what is said on the boards about fighter diversity, I got really wacky with the fighter before getting the Advanced Player's Guide. To be fair I play high INT fighters and almost always heavily use alchemical items but I had a blast and went weird. 5th ed, I'm playing the archetype with the superiority dice and it just feels bland. With the low numbers the d20 feels super swingy and leveling feels like nothing unless its a feat level. The superiority dice are effectively what pathfinder has as feats and after a while I only really use two (ripose and the one that lets you tank) leaving three that I just kind of sit there on my character sheet. I really wish I could trade superiority dice effects for more dice because most of the ones I have are rarely more helpful than the ones I use the most. I get more before next session and I don't really know which ones to use because a lot of them suck in my eyes. The dice seemed like a good idea but 5 min workdays and smoke breaks after every fight don't feel different to me, I'm just have reason to participate in it unlike Pathfinder's fighters, and they matter so much that I kind of have to. But overall I feel like I do less with a 5th ed Fighter than in Core only Fighter. Heck, even though I can move and get all my attacks I barely miss relish moving because most of my time is spent trading blows with the biggest thing in the room so that the squishy casters don't get hit. Overall I just find my character to have no-brainer options for my build and waiting forever to do something new.
But I...
Well battle-master is my least favorite class. Others swear by it as their perfect fighter.
As player try thinking about what you want to do and less about what mechanical options you have. 5e plays a lot better if you just try to do things. In simple encounters that may mean that all you do is smack things. A lot also depends on the DM and what kind of world the DM has made. Martials in my world are probably capable of greater deeds than your world because that is how I prefer to run the game as within the guidelines.
5e is definitely not perfect because it will never satisfy the person looking for all the mechanics and options to be spelled out before them. Maybe this next fight I want to rip a kobold's head off and punt it at the flying dragon. It's up to the DM to figure out what roll I need to make for that. Maybe I want to ride an orc shield down a flight of stairs as I shoot orcs in the eye with my bow. As a DM I would ask for an dex(acrobatics or athletics) check and then give inspiration to the player for attempting that.
...the two new guys who haven't even bothered to introduce themselves...
Who do you mean? I thought the design team was Jason, Stephen, Logan and Mark. Logan's been here for like three years, hasn't he? Is there some other new designer I'm missing?
...the two new guys who haven't even bothered to introduce themselves...Who do you mean? I thought the design team was Jason, Stephen, Logan and Mark. Logan's been here for like three years, hasn't he? Is there some other new designer I'm missing?
He's not new? I saw him post for the first time (it seemed) on the forums a couple of weeks ago during the Vigilante playtest and everybody in my Playtest group had the same reaction as me. "Who the f~*% is Logan Bonner?"
I was pretty sure there was a new guy though, besides Mark. Unless I'm going crazy? Chris Lambertz didn't even question me when I said something about it in response earlier. Then again, "Two new guys" wasn't questioned regardless.
So, sorry, nix the "new guy" think, but still keep the "dismissive response" part.
Thread comes up "Should there be an Extra Vigilante Talent Feat?" and he literally pops in and just responds "No."
I mean he elaborated on it later, but only when specifically asked, and even then it was a pretty terse and very odd response. The thing about the Extra X Feats being an "unfortunate trend" they intended to stop.
Which explains why Extra Wild Talent is gimped, now I think of it.
I'm digressing though. looking back on his post history (of a whopping 135 posts since 2012) he ONLY posts during Playtests and when book previews come up, so it fits my point regardless.
He may be new to the design team, maybe. I don't know, I just wondered who you meant.
It looks like THAT might be the case, reading that post you linked he was brought on in 2012 as a developer and editor, not a designer.